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Employment Opportunities
Mar 13, 2025
LJMN Media, publisher of The Lakeville Journal (first published in 1897) and The Millerton News (first published in 1932), is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news organization.
We seek to help readers make more informed decisions through comprehensive news coverage of communities in Northwest Connecticut and Eastern Dutchess County in New York.
We currently have the following positions open.
Audience Development Editor
The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News seek an Audience Development Editor to expand and engage our readership across digital platforms. In this role, you will select stories for wider distribution, craft and write engaging promotions, and leverage social media and other digital channels to help inform and educate our communities and broaden our reach.
Working closely with editorial and business teams, you will analyze audience data to refine strategy, identify and execute new growth opportunities, and continually enhance best practices for attracting and retaining readers. If you thrive in a collaborative, fast-paced environment and have a strong interest in connecting communities through local journalism, please email your resume and cover letter to James Clark, publisher@lakevillejournal.com.
Full-time Reporter
The Millerton News is seeking a news reporter to cover Harlem Valley towns, including Millerton/North East, Amenia, Millbrook/Washington and Pine Plains and school districts.
Are you interested in your local news scene? Here is a chance to report on community news, business news, the environment, government, police and all the issues that affect the lives of Millerton News readers.
Writing skills and basic knowledge of how New York government functions are a must.
Email Resume and Writing Samples to James Clark, publisher@lakevillejournal.com.
LJMN Media is an equal opportunity employer.
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North Canaan Town Hall
Photo by Riley Klein
NORTH CANAAN — “If you’re not coming to work, why would you get paid?”
Selectman Craig Whiting asked his fellow selectmen this pointed question during a special meeting of the Board on March 12 discussing Town Clerk Jean Jacquier, who has been absent from work for more than a month. She was not present at the meeting.
“There’s been no reasoning, no explanation, no anything as to why you’re not here,” said Whiting.
Jacquier has worked in Town Hall since 1993 and was first elected town clerk in 2017. Conflict arose in 2023 when several complaints of misconduct were lodged against Jacquier.
First Selectman Brian Ohler filed the complaints to the Attorney General’s office, which included, among others, improper security of the vault, posting candidate campaign material in Town Hall and untimely stamping documents. The subsequent investigation found misconduct on the part of Jacquier in each of these three areas but took no punitive action.
Jacquier filed suit against the Town of North Canaan to recoup $15,000 in legal fees accrued during the investigation. The town motioned to strike the case, which was granted by Hon. Walter Menjivar at Torrington Superior Court on Jan. 28, 2025.
Ohler said Jacquier stopped coming to work after that ruling and has not been in contact since Feb. 4. During her absence, she continued to receive pay checks.
Assistant Town Clerk Marilisa Camardi had been filling in part time but was away the first week of March. To keep the office open, Executive Assistant Paul Mattingly was appointed assistant town clerk by the Board of Selectmen at its March 3 meeting. The two will work together until the next election or until Jacquier returns.
“It’s an essential function of the town to have that office open,” said Whiting.
Last week, Jacquier told The Lakeville Journal her recent absence is due to harassment and antagonism in Town Hall, which is taking a toll on her health.
Jacquier’s attorney, Jeffrey Mirman, communicated with the selectmen to request the meeting regarding her salary be open to the public as opposed to executive session. The selectmen complied.
Selectman Jesse Bunce said he has been in contact with Jacquier and he presented a letter from her to his fellow selectmen during the March 12 meeting. Ohler stated he could not verify the source of the letter, but he would forward it to the town attorney. The letter was not read into the record.
Ohler made a motion to suspend Jacquier’s salary until she returns to work. Whiting seconded. The motion passed 2-0 with Bunce abstaining.
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Dan Howe’s time machine
Mar 12, 2025
Dan Howe at the Kearcher-Monsell Gallery at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.
Natalia Zukerman
“Every picture begins with just a collection of good shapes,” said painter and illustrator Dan Howe, standing amid his paintings and drawings at the Kearcher-Monsell Gallery at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. The exhibit, which opened on Friday, March 7, and runs through April 10, spans decades and influences, from magazine illustration to portrait commissions to imagined worlds pulled from childhood nostalgia. The works — some luminous and grand, others intimate and quiet — show an artist whose technique is steeped in history, but whose sensibility is wholly his own.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and trained at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Howe’s artistic foundation was built on rigorous, old-school principles. “Back then, art school was like boot camp,” he recalled. “You took figure drawing five days a week, three hours a day. They tried to weed people out, but it was good training.” That discipline led him to study under Tom Lovell, a renowned illustrator from the golden age of magazine art. “Lovell always said, ‘No amount of detail can save a picture that’s commonplace in design.’”
Training led to work. Early on, while still a graduate assistant at Syracuse University, Howe began painting portraits — chancellors, deans, and, later, an endless roster of chairmen and medical executives. It paid well, but Howe found that the job of a portraitist, even a highly skilled one, is ultimately limited. “They’re just the same thing, you know, just a guy in a suit. Later, maybe it was a girl in a suit,” said Howe.
Between commissions, he painted for himself. This show is a gathering of those moments — studies of his wife and daughters, mythic scenes painted for libraries, and Star Wars covers from his time living near Dark Horse Comics in Oregon.A large painting, originally commissioned for a library, shows a girl in an attic opening a trunk, imagination spilling into the room. The library remodeled and sent the painting back. Now it anchors a wall in the show.
Dan Howe’s work reflects the Brandywine School’s devotion to craftsmanship, narrative depth, and a luminous, almost nostalgic realism. Like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth before him, Howe builds scenes using light and composition to evoke mood and meaning. His meticulous brushwork and layering techniques nod to the tradition of classical illustration, yet his work diverges in its contemporary stillness. Of Norman Rockwell, Howe said, “He’s of my era, and our styles are similar. Of course Rockwell is Rockwell. I’ve got a little more painterly, Sargent-esque stuff running through mine.” The influence is there, not as mimicry, but as a quiet echo, refined through his own aesthetic language. “I’m an anachronism,” he said, without regret. His influences form a lineage of illustrators whose work once filled the pages of The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s. They understood, as Howe does, that a painting must be more than accurate.“Mood is everything,” said Howe, drawing a comparison between two paintings in the show — a couple by a fire — to an old Star Wars concept painting. “Same color scheme. Different world. Mood is everything.”
Teaching remains a passion for Howe. When he and his family moved to the east coast from Chicago, Howe taught a series at the Norman Rockwell Museum called “Painting Like Rockwell,” something he hopes to revive. “I like beginners,” he said. “They don’t have bad habits yet.”
Howe also runs a summer figure drawing workshop at HVRHS with an old-school approach. “You’ve just walked into a time machine — this is art school, 1965. Three hours of drawing in the morning, three in the afternoon. No cell phones.” His methods may be antiquated but the results are living proof that some things are worth preserving. “Maybe this stuff is so old it’s new again,” he mused.
As he hung his pieces for this show, Howe said teachers stopped by, connecting his images to their own memories. “That’s a success,” he said. “If a picture makes someone feel something, then it’s done its job.”
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